Re: "You
Are What You Eat"

: : : I enjoy
the origin offered here, that this expression originates in the Hippy Era of the
sixties and is associated with eating natural foods, however I also know that
this was an expression/concept popular in 19th century German Philosophy.

:
: It was a pun actually, used most famously by Feuerbach who wrote, "Der Mensch
ist, was er ißt." Ist and ißt are pronounced the same way in German so you might
take it either way - i.e. Man is what he eats; Man eats what he is. I don't know
if he based this on a probverb that already existed or if he was the first one
to coin the term. I suspect the latter.

: : Feuerbach was responding to Hegel
for whom the driving force of society was the development of the Idea (Zeitgeist?).
Feuerbach thought that the driving force of civilization was humanities' material
needs and circumstances, and that ideas flowed from those circumstances.

: :
It is actually possible - in a limited way - to predict the political and social
outlook of people through and analysis of their diet. In Feuerbach's day, peasants
tended to eat more grain and less meat, the petite bourgeoisie, more meat and
sugar and the bourgeoisies had the most meat/protein as a proportion of their
diet of all. (Today we could would probably create a similar map of social strata
today by looking at the proportion of sugar and fat in people's diets.)

: :
In my opinion, many of the health-obsessed people using the phrase today really
are literally just extentions of what they eat.

: From a previous discussion:
"YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. Your health, looks, and well-being result from the kinds
of food you consume. The proverb has been used in the United States since 1941,
and is listed in the 1948 'Macmillan (Home) Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar
Phrases' by Burton Stevenson." "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

You are
what you eat. Var[iant]: Man is what he eats. Rec[orded] dist[ribution]: Ill.,
Kans. 1st cit[ation]: US 1941 Gray, _Advancing Front of Medicine_. 20c. coll[ection]:
Stevenson 661:4.
From _A Dictionary of American Proverbs_

Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin, in _Physiologie du Gout_ , wrote:

Dis-moi ce que tu
manges, je te dirai ce que tu es [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what
you are].

Ludwig Feuerbach was born in 1804, so he was 21 in 1825.

There
flased through her mind the German sayung, "One is what one eats." (J. Gollomb,
_Subtle Trail_, 1930)